Chapter Text
v. found out about you
Look up the word 'sleep' in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and you'll find far more than prose related to brain waves and rapid-eye movement. This is because sleep, much like another word beginning with the letter 's', is a subject of great and stirring interest to many inhabitants of the Galaxy. (Interestingly enough, this other word also refers to an activity which according to tradition takes place in a bed, but in actual practise can and does take place just about anywhere.)
Entries for both words are oft-consulted and address many similar concerns, including How can I fit more of this into my daily routine?, How can I improve the quality of what I'm getting?, and Where can I go on holiday if I want to grab some that's really top-notch? (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does suggest that you be prepared to spend more than the usual thirty Altairian dollars a day if the latter is indeed your goal.)
There are, of course, persons to be found on worlds across the Galaxy that appear to have little use for either activity, who tend to refer to them in tones that suggest disinterest or disdain, and in most cases probably prefer the Encyclopedia Galactica to The Hitchhiker's Guide anyway. The rest of the Universe wonders just what the bally hell is wrong with these people, and precisely how they (and in some particularly baffling cases, their entire species) made it through their first really long power cut without topping themselves.
At the moment, Arthur Dent is asleep, and he is enjoying it. He is dreaming happy dreams which, it will be of no surprise to note, are at times dry and leafy, at other times gloriously quenching, and at all times a rich, invigorating brown. Like all moments not spent sitting in church or school-leaving ceremonies, this one will not last. It will end when something yellow and furious bursts into the room where Arthur is sleeping and turns on the light.
Right about -
now.
"Where's your friend?"
Arthur blinked and shielded his eyes as the words dripped into his brain like treacle from a particularly angry spoon. "Have you tried his room?" he said finally. "Back out in the corridor, on your left?" Careful of his put-upon irises, Arthur raised the arm resting over his eyes, just enough to peek out. The merciless light-switch-wielding intruder was still there, and demonstrating no signs of not being there at any point in the near future. He decided to be helpful and repeat the most important part of the directions. "Back out in the corridor?"
The intruder - Rose - shook her head. "Yeah, he's not there. Where else?" Spinning round on her heels, she pitched her voice at the walls, loudly enough to make Arthur wince. "Are you hiding in here?"
"If Ford's here, he's been awfully quiet, which seems highly unlikely," Arthur said. He sat up, arranging his blankets with reflexive modesty. Then he remembered that, like the rest of the universe, Rose already seen his pyjamas, and modesty at this stage was a wasted effort. "I suggest you try the bathroom, if you haven't already. After all that drink, he's probably getting better acquainted with the toilet."
"Oh," Rose said, wrinkling up her nose. "No. I haven't. Ew."
Hope flared within Arthur. Surely that was that, then - surely Rose would decide to take whatever-it-was up with Ford at a later date, when there was less risk of smell and stickiness. Surely now she would leave him to sleep in peace, or, no, even better, come over and sit beside him on the bed and talk a bit? They could start with how annoying Ford was - Arthur had plenty to offer on that topic - and move onto other, more congenial subjects. . . .
But Rose, who had seen a great many things which could be described as 'ew' during her travels in time and space, said, "Show me which door?"
Heaving a sigh, which, even though he quite liked Rose, he was careful to make entirely audible, Arthur pushed himself out of bed. So it wasn't just aliens, then. Travelling through space somehow removed the need for sleep from everyone and everything except for him.
Arthur led the way out into the corridor and around the corner to the bathroom, stopping outside the door. Now that he was up and about and his synapses were zipping and zapping, he was beginning to wonder exactly what Ford had done to Rose. There were, he decided, some fairly obvious choices. "Rose," he began gently, "if Ford's been making unwelcome advances, or a nuisance of himself in any way. . . "
"Yeah, he's been a nuisance all right," Rose said, "but not how you mean."
"Oh," Arthur said. He reflected. "Is he singing again? Fifteen years on Earth, I suppose he was bound to pick up a few things. Shame it had to be Ging Gang Goolie, though."
"Nope!" Rose said. She knocked on the door so loudly that Arthur would've said that he heard the ship murmur its displeasure in response, if saying so wouldn't have been a lot like saying he'd just decided to go off his head.
There was no reply from inside. Translating this silence into full permission to enter, Rose opened the door.
It really was a grand bathroom, all gleaming tile and pointless spaciousness. Ford was sprawled across the shiny floor on his stomach, his towel in place as a pillow, snoring happily and completely unaware that he was robbing Arthur once again of participation in the self-same act, albeit indirectly this time. If, somewhere in the galaxy, there was a museum showcasing the myriad unfairnesses of life, Arthur Dent felt that he deserved his own exhibition. This particular moment might get trimmed in favour of some other, more visually arresting one, but in spirit, it certainly had its place.
"Wake up," Rose commanded, to Arthur's distinct satisfaction.
Ford, who had a bit of a history of not doing anything anyone told him to do, didn't.
Rose kicked him in the vicinity of the stomach. Not at all hard, but Arthur got the feeling she wouldn't mind stepping it up if needed for results. Ford responded to this somewhat violent act by curling his body around her foot, like a toddler who'd been given a favourite toy.
Rose disentangled her foot and made ready for a second approach.
"Rose," Arthur said quickly, because whatever else Ford was, he was neither more nor less than Arthur's best friend in the universe, "what did Ford do?"
"This," she said, pulling something small and black out of the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. "I found it under his chair in the kitchen." She bent down and waved the thing in Ford's face.
"What is it?"
"A voice recorder."
"A voice recorder?" Arthur squinted at it, wondering how she could tell. It was smooth and sleek and there weren't any red buttons marked 'REC'. Come to that, there didn't appear to be any buttons at all.
"Yep!" Rose displayed a nerve-wracking number of teeth.
"Well," Arthur placated, even though an unwelcome thought had already crossed his mind, leaving a trail of muddy footprints, "maybe it just fell out of his bag. God knows what all he carries around in there."
"Nice try," said Rose. There was a squashy sort of thud as her foot made second contact. "It was on."
"Are you sure?" Arthur reached a hand out to it, but he hadn't even come close to touching it when a voice came blaring out. His voice. "You grew up in a wasteland?" it asked.
"Yeah," Rose said loudly, almost drowning out Ford's voice it went on about the wonders of Betelguese Five in response. "I'm sure."
"Ah," Arthur said, as the thought that had dropped in earlier turned on the telly, put its dirty feet up on the sofa, and generally made itself at home. Meanwhile, on the recorder, the Earth's destruction was rudely mimicked. Arthur winced. "Could you -"
Rose waved a hand at the device, and there was silence. Echoey, glarey silence. The kind of silence, in fact, which often followed when the female of the species arrived home to discover just what the male and his guests had done to the lounge in her absence.
Arthur dusted off a time-honoured male coping strategy. "Not the most practical of designs, is it?" he diverted.
"No," Rose said. "Lot more space-age than anything the Doctor's got, though." She shoved the recorder back in her pocket, folded her arms, and generally lent support to the theory that many time-honoured male coping strategies are in fact bollocks. "Your friend's very clever, isn't he?"
Arthur wished she wouldn't keep calling Ford his friend in that tone of voice. It made him doubt the wisdom of continuing to claim him. "I don't know," Arthur said carefully, "he thinks he is."
"He set up the whole night, yeah? He got out the drink. He kept pouring. He brought up dead planets and all."
Arthur couldn't disagree. "Look -" and he stopped, eyes on the alien sprawled across the floor. "Let's talk over there." He went over to the sinks, and Rose followed, jumping up to sit on the counter. "Ford somehow got it in his head that the Doctor's a mythological being or some such," Arthur continued quietly. "And he's all hung up on finding out anything he can, because. . . ." Arthur realised that he didn't particularly want to finish that sentence, so he didn't. He was rapidly gaining the impression that when it came to people messing the Doctor about, Rose might not really be all that opposed to the opening of airlocks, or police box doors, or whatever the case might be.
"Because?" Rose prompted.
"Now it's nothing to get worked up about. . . ."
"Oh, I'm not worked up." Her not-worked-up voice was deeper than her normal voice, and did funny things to the hairs on the back of Arthur's neck.
Swallowing, Arthur said, "You see, if Ford's in this much of a state, I don't think he'll remember anything from tonight anyway."
Rose looked at him in a way that suggested Arthur would do well to continue.
"I bet that's why he set the recorder, because he knew he wouldn't be able rely on his brain."
Rose hopped down off the counter and stood quite close to - actually, it was impossible not to notice, within kicking range of - Arthur. "Spill it," she said. "Now."
Arthur spilt. "Ford works for a sort of galactic travel guide," he said. "And if he's right about the Doctor, he thinks he can fix up the entry on Time Lords and make himself some cash."
"A travel guide. He's going to put the Doctor in a travel guide."
Arthur didn't like to say yes, so he went with a nod.
"He said Time Lord?"
Again, Arthur nodded.
Rose fell silent, looking down and pulling at the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Arthur recognised the signs of being badly worried because he so often was himself. "Okay," she said, after a moment, "okay, I'm gonna tell you something, but you've got to promise you won't tell him."
"I promise."
Rose gave Arthur a little smile. It did funny things to his body temperature. "He's got it right, your friend," she said. "The Doctor's people are mythological 'cause he's the only one left. There was a war, and his planet was destroyed, and now he's the only one."
"It's funny," Arthur said, "the more I see of the universe, the more surprised I am that there are any planets left at all."
"So I don't want your friend to go round telling the universe he's met a Time Lord," Rose said. "And I don't want him bothering the Doctor to find what out he is."
"Is it a secret? That he's the only Time Lord?" Arthur asked. He'd met aliens with secrets before. And he'd seen what aliens with secrets were prepared to do to keep their secrets secret. Go nuclear, for example.
"No. . . I don't think so, anyway. . . It's just, he reminds himself enough. He doesn't need any help."
"Leave it to me," Arthur said, suddenly certain that he would fix this for her, despite not having the first clue how he might go about it. "I'll sort Ford out. It'll be fine."
Rose's smile was one of the prettiest sights he'd seen in the galaxy.
vi. come together
In an infinite universe, teeming with life of every shape, size, and flavour, cross-cultural -
Hang about, strike that.
In a universe that is in all likelihood most probably infinite, since no-one's ever got to the end of it, there's a lot more disused space than anything else. There's quite a lot of life, too, and it is indeed varied, but anyone with a bit of a grip of the mathematics of the situation can tell you that, proportionally speaking, teeming doesn't come into it.
More accurately, therefore (but less eloquently, and with less of a sense of flow), in a place that's really big and has a lot of things inhabiting it, cross-cultural misunderstandings are the rule of the day. Sometimes they can be avoided with quick feet and a little luck - but only sometimes.
Bop around the galaxy long enough, and, even if you've got the right reference material by your side, they'll happen so often you won't even bother to blink. You'll save your eyelids' energy for the clashes, the skirmishes, and the all-out my-battle-fleet's-bigger-than-your-battle-fleet wars.
So when Ford Prefect woke up on the floor of the Time Lord's loo next to a puddle of sick, he didn't do what Arthur Dent would have done, i.e., experience a sudden flashback to the one and only time he'd kept his sister's cat while she'd gone on holiday. Prominently figured in this memory would have been trails of sick, a boot, a furry rear end, and an open door. Frightening parallels would have been drawn, but only to a point, because he would have felt quite sure that the Doctor wouldn't immediately regret kicking them out and spend hour after hour scouring the universe to find them.
But Ford Prefect was not Arthur Dent, and so he opened his eyes, smiled in the general direction of the human sitting nearby, and said, "Great night, hey?"
"If you say so," Arthur said frostily.
"I think I just did." Ford continued smiling. He didn't actually remember a great deal of the night before, which was mostly why he was so firmly convinced that it had been excellent.
"He's not a Time Lord," Arthur said. A thrill ran through him, a lovely, dual-layered, malicious thrill, borne both of flagrantly lying and of making Ford's balloon go pop.
Except it didn't. Ford waved the words lazily away.
Arthur jabbed again. "He's not."
"He is."
"He's not."
"Tell me, Arthur, how long did we know each other on Earth?"
"Five years." Arthur thought back on them longingly. "Five nice, mundane years."
"And how many times over the course of those five mundane years did you suspect I was anything but a human?"
"You were an actor, you said," Arthur pointed out. "Pardon me for finding that explained rather a lot."
Ford sighed, because he'd read the Sun - no place better for news of green flying saucers - and Arthur had a point. "All right, go ahead, tell me why you're so sure he's not a Time Lord."
"Because after you two drank yourself silly, Rose told me so."
"Oh yeah? And what exactly did she say?"
Arthur had had time to think on this while Ford was snoring. "She said that when the Vogons came, the Doctor was out on the street, and he jumped into a call box for a place to hide. He was gobsmacked to find out it was a spaceship, as you would be, but decided that was probably a good thing at that point. So he went out and pulled the first person he saw inside as well. That was Rose."
"And you're expecting me to believe that a human, facing the destruction of his planet, with only seconds to spare, managed to fly a TARDIS?"
Arthur shrugged.
"A Type 40 does come with the H.A.D.S. standard," Ford said.
Arthur blinked. Had Ford just come to agree with his version of events, or proven incontrovertibly that they were a load of tosh?
By this point in the friendship, Ford knew what bafflement and uncertainty looked like on the face of Arthur Dent. "Hostile Action Displacement System," he said. "It's a relocation device. The ship protects itself against attacks by dematerializing from wherever the danger is and rematerializing somewhere safe. I'm not sure just how large a spatial jump is possible, though. . . ."
"But in a situation like this one," Arthur pointed out, rallying.
"Yes, that's true. The TARDIS would do everything it could to get off that planet. But all the same. . . I've met plenty of your lot over the last fifteen years, and that Doctor -"
"Ford," Arthur interrupted this dangerous path of thought, "have you listened to the man speak? That's not coming from the Babel fish. And you don't just pick that up on a visit or two. That takes a lifetime."
Ford sagged, suddenly depressed in a way that waking up soiled on the floor of a toilet would've done for most people.
"Bugger," he said, except he didn't, but it's important to remember that raising the rating invariably means shrinking the audience. So the small European country actually referenced by Ford Prefect shall remain nameless.
*
In a universe that's really big and all that, very few cross-cultural misunderstandings ever arise because person from Culture A has been caught messing about behind the wheel of the personal transport of person from Culture B. This is because there are very few societies in which such behaviour is met with anything like approval in the first place, so most persons from Culture A cannot manage to actually claim cultural imperative with a straight face when caught messing about.
Ford Prefect had not been brought up in one of those rare societies where throwing yourself into the driver's seat of someone else's vehicle is considered a sign of the greatest respect. But Ford Prefect also had never let matters of etiquette stand between him and a lift - that was part of the definition of the word 'hitchhiker,' when last he'd checked. Anyway, all he was going to do was send out a short sub-etha message. It wasn't like he was going to fiddle with the man's radio.
Ford's eyes were gleaming as he approached the console, because he knew absolutely and beyond a doubt that this was a TARDIS, whatever species its current pilot happened to belong to. His fingers were twitching with the desire to press all of the knobs and buttons and interestingly-shaped levers.
Arthur, no part of him gleaming, several parts of him twitching, followed.
"Ford, is this really a good idea? Never mind, I'm wasting my breath, aren't I? And I really should be conserving it, considering I'm going to need all this oxygen and then some when we get booted out the door. I hope you find the time out there before we suffocate and die to think, 'It was all my fault.'"
"Arthur, calm down. Be hoopy. If a human can find his away around this ship, then I'm not going to have any problems."
"Do they all have suicidal levels of self-esteem where you come from?"
"All I'm going to do is send out a signal, just like tooting a horn. Easy as cake. In fact," Ford laughed, "look! It's shaped like a horn!"
"Pie," Arthur said.
"What?" Ford said. Then he squeezed the rubber horn-shaped bit, and everything quietly went nuts.
Green and gold faded into white - except they didn't, they didn't do anything so kind to the eyes as fade.
High, arching, timeless walls morphed into the cutting edge of Damogran interior design - except they didn't, they didn't even move over for it.
Krill swarmed by, bioluminescently.
A coconut dropped from a tree, missing Arthur's head by inches.
A llama asked him if he had ever truly considered the advantages of double-glazing.
A man with two heads said, "Hey, Ford, how's it shaking? Still got Monkeyman, I see."
That last bit was the bit Arthur really could have done without.
"And who's the nose?" There were far more people in the room than there had been just a few seconds before. Some had come from the same place as the krill and the llama, while others had rushed in from other parts of the TARDIS. One of the speaker's hands waved at the Doctor, who had come to a halt beside an ice floe and didn't look at all happy about it. "And who's the doll?" Another hand waved at Rose, a few steps behind.
"I've got a question meself," the Doctor said. Arthur might have decided to strategically reposition himself behind the coconut tree, but it had thoughtlessly vanished. He began sidling towards Rose instead. "It's a two-parter. Who are you, and what have you done to my ship?"
"I wish I could say I was surprised," a metallic voice intoned, "but I can't. Depressing, isn't it."
"Listen, the righteous indignation's terrific, amazingly terrific, you really sell it, but it's kind of a waste, yeah?" Zaphod said. "Seeing how you know who I am."
"No," said the Doctor, "I don't."
"Sure you do. Go on," Zaphod smoothed back the hair on one head and angled the other in profile, "guess."
"No," the Doctor said.
While this particular non-cross-cultural misunderstanding was busy devolving into a clash, the person who had brought it about was busy saying nothing. This was because he was too occupied with feeling annoyed. He had lost time, the chance of a pay rise, and the possibility of a really thrilling holiday, not to mention the opportunity to make an introduction that would have knocked Zaphod's socks off, all because the Doctor didn't have the decency to be a Time Lord. The fact that Zaphod did not seem to somehow be overcome by the urge to remove his socks regardless also rankled.
Therefore when Ford did finally speak, it was not with words chosen for their ability to soothe or placate or bring peace to two opposing factions. "Zaphod," he said, "maybe it's time you nicked something else, got yourself on the news again. Your constituents don't even recognise you anymore."
"Hey, didn't you see the latest Starbright magazine?" Zaphod asked. One of his heads preened. "You're only looking at the most enigmatic, unpredictable, and generally incredibly thrilling leader of the year."
Rose looked at Arthur. "Most thrilling leader of the year? Who is this bloke?" she asked in an undertone.
"President of the Galaxy, so they tell me," Arthur said.
"What, seriously?"
"Apparently. Do you remember how sometimes, back on Earth, you'd have a day where one thing after another went wrong and you'd think, 'has the entire universe gone mad?'"
"Yeah."
"Well, it seems to have gone some time ago," Arthur said.
There was a sad, weary sound, like audible open-air oxidation. "They didn't even bother to ask you, did they? 'Course they didn't. People. Can't live with them, that's what I always say."
"Funny," the Doctor said, taking three strides forward and into the space occupied by Zaphod, Ford, and Trillian, leading Arthur to congratulate himself on his earlier decision in regard to sidling, "I thought I asked a question."
"Look, man, I'm just here picking up a friend. Your ship's just a place to park." Zaphod craned his necks around. "And hey, I didn't know we could do it like this. Talk about style! Trillian baby, did you know?"
"Oh," Trillian said, her eyes fixed on the Doctor, "I'm sure there were odds."
"I'd appreciate if you'd unpark it," the Doctor said, all barely-constrained alien - or to Ford's mind, Northern - rage.
Arthur looked round at everyone's faces. As far as he could tell, the humans were the only ones reading the emotional temperature of the room correctly. As usual, the aliens were getting kelvin readings off a Celsius thermometer.
"Now listen, is that any way to speak to your President? Maybe I want to take a look around. Yeah. I'm thinking this is a State visit, all of a sudden."
At his most casual, Zaphod strolled over to the console, presumably, Arthur thought, to see if he could see his face in it. Trillian and Eddie the computer did most of the flying of the Heart of Gold, as far as he'd noticed. Zaphod did most of the lounging and getting in the way.
"Well, if you want to bring that into it. I wouldn't, but it's your own lookout, I'm sure. It'll all end in tears if you ask me, but of course you didn't. Nobody ever does."
"Hey, Marvin," Zaphod said, "shut up, will you? No-one's listening."
"That's what you think," Marvin muttered, twin points of rebellious light flaring in his eyesockets.
The Doctor, Arthur noticed, was grinning. In the normal way of things this would mean that all was well and he and the other humans could relax, but the Doctor's grins were a lot of things, and normal wasn't one of them.
"Zaphod Beeblebrox! Haha!" The Doctor clapped his hands together. "They elected you President, you ran off in a ship that wasn't yours, and never did a day's worth of governing."
That sounded bizarrely like approval. Hoping it wouldn't turn out to be a mistake, Arthur relaxed a fraction.
"See? You're not as ignorant as you think," said Zaphod.
Blast, thought Arthur, definitely a mistake.
But the Doctor either didn't hear Zaphod's bit of rudeness, or he was too wrapped up in being delighted to give a toss. "Rose, this is Zaphod Beeblebrox! Come say hello."
Rose went, bouncing a little as she landed at the Doctor's side. "Mr. President," she said, her voice low and serious, her eyes dancing.
Zaphod aimed double expressions of charm and cool in Rose's direction and leaned back with Presidential hipness against the TARDIS console. "You got it, babe. The one and only. Cooler than a thousand frozen moons, and way more fun to be on."
Rose made a little strangled sound. "Pleased to meet ya," she managed.
"Tell me about it," Zaphod said. One of his heads began looking around at what other parts of him were propped on. "Hey, this is some ship you've got here."
"Isn't it?" If the compilers of the Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary had been present and inclined to support their text with audio examples, those two words as spoken by the Doctor would have been snapped up for the entry on 'pride.'
"Yeah, maybe you missed it, but organic travel's kinda out these days. You should dump this thing, get yourself a nice star cruiser. One with a quark drive."
The temperature plummeted so far and so fast that even the aliens felt like shivering. That's not just a metaphor, either. The room really was suddenly quite chilly.
"Can't say that surprised me, either," Marvin said, shaking his head with an exaggerated, grinding slowness. "And don't waste any time waiting for an apology. You'll just be disappointed."
Arthur, who hadn't been shot at, forced to listen to poetry, subjected to explosions, or ridiculed whilst on board (Zaphod's Monkeyman comment aside), and who had been given a very nice meal as well as a place to sleep (even if he had barely been able to take advantage of it), took a decisive step forward. "This," he said, "is without a doubt the best spaceship I've ever been on."
"Yeah, well, like you know," said Zaphod. "Ford, are you ready to go?"
"Ready," Ford said, with feeling.
"Apeface? Are you coming or staying?"
Arthur fantasized for a moment about staying. About talking to Rose every day, eating Earth food every night, retiring to that nice soft bed afterwards and getting in some proper sleep (or possibly, depending how those chats with Rose went, even something else that began with a 's'), and maybe, just maybe, having a cup of tea.
Then he looked at Rose, and the Doctor, who were standing so close together that looking at one automatically meant looking at the other. He looked at Trillian, who was standing similarly close to Zaphod. Arthur sighed. "Yes," he said, "I'm coming."
"Don't go yet."
"What?" said Zaphod.
"What?" said Ford.
"I said, don't go yet." And if those responsible for that massive dictionary had wished to make it even more ultra-ly complete by expanding into phrases, idioms, and expressions, as well as another fleet of storage trucks, video footage of the Doctor's subsequent behaviour would have proven useful as an example of the classic Earth saying, 'do as I say, not as I do.'
"Okay, honey," Zaphod said to Trillian, the second the Doctor was out of the room, "let's blow this joint."
"No."
"What?"
"We parked our ship right through the middle of his and didn't even hail him first! If he wants us to wait, it's the least we can do."
Zaphod glared, then went straight back to lounging, as if he'd been planning to do some more of that all along.
"Look at you!" Rose said, coming over and hitting Arthur lightly on the arm. "Don't reckon you could've put that any better."
Arthur was too busy looking behind her, at the door the Doctor had exited by. "What's he going to do? Why doesn't he want us to leave? Never mind," he said, realising that Zaphod could decide to go ahead and take off at any minute, "it may be rude of me, but would you mind if I asked where the two of you are going?"
Maybe it was time he started being a little more astrally-minded. Started paying attention to exactly which planets they were visiting, and which Galactic sectors they were endangering their lives in. Now that he had a friend out there, somewhere. . . .
"Oh, we've got some paperwork to do. Should be pretty dull. And after that," Rose shrugged, "there's no telling 'til we get there." She glanced back over her shoulder, at the doorway, then stepped closer. "Listen, Arthur, you make them take you back home sometime," she said. "Not - not right now. Later. Sometime later. But be sure to get them to take you. You'll feel better if you do, I promise."
She smiled at him, one last, blinding, warming smile, and if Arthur Dent was someone else he might have said 'I do already,' and kissed her goodbye.
The Doctor reappeared a moment later, while Arthur was busy shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, stood directly in front of him, and smiled. Arthur jumped a little, which was a perfectly natural response to being the focus of that attention, and stepped an instinctive step away from Rose.
. . . who was beaming, he noticed, and then he noticed the brown paper bag in the alien's hands, and then Arthur Dent's knees went weak.
"Got something for you," the Doctor said. "You're a man of good taste. Think you'll appreciate it."
Arthur reached for the bag in a moment that was terribly long and fraught with the possibility of the ships separating before his fingers made contact, leaving them grasping empty air in a pose suited perfectly for a science-fiction programme (and useful to some in the publishing trade, perhaps, as an illustration of the word 'cliche').
But the moment came to its end, and there it was: the bag, in his hands. It was light, it contained something with hard pointy corners, it gently exuded the most perfect, delicate aroma - Arthur could barely bring himself to look inside, but he did, and -
Little boxes! Little boxes of the sort that tea came in!
The last thing Arthur Dent felt as the gold of the TARDIS faded away was the warmth of Rose's lips on his cheek; the last thing he thought was that the winged shop-creature had actually got it right: it had been a nice day, and he would enjoy the slaking of his thirst. That was a very safe thing to say.
Now that's how to use the word 'safe.'
*
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has something to say on the subject of chance meetings.
They happen, it says. Even though the universe is most probably infinite and the number of people in it is staggeringly large and the number of places they could bump into each other isn't what you'd call small, they happen. Sooner or later you'll be in a restaurant on a moon on the other side of Alfirk, and you'll go to use the toilet and run into someone who knows your mother in the little hall by the pay telephones.
This will make some of you over-excited, and prone to sitting up nights talking about probability and fate the interconnectedness of things. The rest of you will shrug and think, Well, that was weird.
If you're not good with weird, you're probably better off staying home and giving this book to someone who is. Your mum'll be glad to have you.
If you are good with weird, then you are going to love this galaxy.